Stephen Colbert Details Hospitalization, Recovery for Ruptured Appendix: “I Was Not Aware of the Amount of Trouble I Was In”

Abbey White
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Stephen Colbert returned to The Late Show on Monday night after taking several weeks off to treat a ruptured appendix, revealing that he dropped 14 pounds after experiencing blood poisoning.

Appearing behind his desk for the first time in three weeks, the host and comedian spent the opening of Monday’s show detailing the medical emergency, from his last day on set to his trip to the St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx, where his burst organ was treated by doctors and nurses. The Late Show host, whose last episode aired Nov. 22, also shared that they weren’t able to identify why his appendix had burst, but that he was on morphine and Dilaudid to manage his pain during recovery.

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“It is so lovely to see all of you,” Colbert began. “The last time I was sitting at this desk, which was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I was in a heap of trouble. I was not aware of the amount of trouble I was in.”

Colbert recounted how symptoms began the day of filming his anticipated interview with David Letterman, with band leader Louis Cato sharing that “for first time in almost nine years, you had to rehearse the monologue sitting at the desk with a birth bucket next to you.”

While it was a “joy” to have Letterman in the house, Colbert noted, once he got home from the taping, he began to feel differently. “I didn’t know what was going on. I thought I might have caught something from Dave’s beard,” he joked. “I woke up the next morning just in abdominal agony, and I figured the pain would go away.”

That pain had somewhat passed, he said, so he made the call to record two episodes that night, so his staff could have an extra day off for the holidays. The Late Show host added that he was also spurred to move forward after having been out for “five months during the strike,” along with having previously missed a week for COVID.

“How bad could it be?” he said, before conceding — while showing pictures of a healthy appendix and his own ruptured one — that it “turns out, extremely bad.”

“The pain was manageable. It only hurt when I moved — and when I didn’t,” he said, to audience laughs. “I held it together for two monologues and two-second acts and then a long interview with Bradley Cooper, because there is no pain when you’re lost in those baby blues. But here’s the thing: the moment I was not prepared for — and I want to start off by saying I love this man — was the cooking segment I did with José Andrés. At the end of it, he spontaneously grabbed me to dance with him afterward.”

Colbert, who clarified that neither Cooper nor Andrés had any idea about the level of pain he was experiencing, said he felt like he was “dying” by the end of the tapings, and that he had come down with a “raging fever” on top of “shaking like a Polaroid picture.” It would be both his driver, Pablo, and wife, Evelyn McGee-Colbert, who ultimately made the call for him to go to the hospital, where medical professionals identified that his appendix had burst.

“They said when they opened me up, it was like they’d shot John Wick 5 down there,” he recalled. “I don’t want to go into much detail here, but basically they go in there with a power washer and a Shop-Vac.

“They don’t know why appendix goes bad … because they don’t know why they go good,” he continued. “They have no idea what it does. All they know is at some point it just turns around to the pancreas and says, ‘I bet I could kill this guy.'”

Colbert concluded by thanking the hospital staff, his family, those in Hollywood and beyond who sent their well-wishes, as well as “the people on this show, who truly went beyond the call of duty to get me through that taping and propping me up.

“They’re too many to name. You know who you are, and I’ll never forget it. To everyone who did not reach out: I know who you are, and I’ll never forget it,” he joked. “And you might be surprised, at the end here, I’d like to thank my appendix because you giving me blood poisoning helped me lose 14 pounds. Ladies, gentlemen, you heard it here first. Appendicitis is the new Ozempic.”

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